The present invention generally relates to surgical devices and methods and, more particularly, to surgical devices specifically adapted for percutaneous surgical procedures and to methods for performing percutaneous surgical procedures.
Endoscopic surgery, and surgery made possible through the remote visualization provided by endoscopes, has developed dramatically in recent years and offers many advantages over more traditional surgical procedures. One of the major limitations of endoscope-assisted surgery and any surgery in which surgical instruments are inserted through the skin to an interior surgical site, is the formation and maintenance of a proper entry port in the skin and underlying tissue layers. In many surgical procedures, such as gastric surgery and others wherein the organ or tissue to be worked upon must be insufflated, the entry port must minimize leakage of pressurizing air. Prior to the present invention, no reliable device or method for the formation and maintenance of a surgical entry port has been available, thereby rendering endoscopic surgery impractical as a replacement for traditional "open wound" type surgical procedures.